But it was the anecdotes about what investors were doing that were most disturbing. A 31-year-old equipment salesman from Louisiana makes two trades an hour from his brokerage account. That’s not two trades a week or even two a day, but two an hour — or, by my count, over 3,000 a year. Of course, he’s also contemplating quitting his job to become a full-time trader. Sound familiar?

The people featured in the article are making all the mistakes in the book: jumping in to the market again after a huge, multiyear run; buying individual stocks, a loser’s game for the vast majority of investors, and, worst of all, trading. Despite all the sales pitches, active trading is a disaster for most of its practitioners: Extensive research using data from millions of trading accounts found that 99% — that’s no typo — of active traders lost money in the markets. And yet, here we go again.